Lord Tebbit is one of Britain's most outspoken conservative commentators and politicians. He was a senior cabinet minister in Margaret Thatcher's government and is a former Chairman of the Conservative Party. He has also worked in journalism, publishing, advertising and was a pilot in the RAF and British Overseas Airways.

The 30-year-old Thatcher papers show a government of clear purpose and good planning. Those were the days…

There is great sport for journalists in the latest batch of Cabinet papers to be released under the 30-year rule, as well as great prospecting for serious students of modern history. Thirty years is too short a time for my taste, but it will soon be only 20, all in the haste to appease (for it can never be satisfied) the modern urge for instant gratification in all things.

Naturally enough a good deal of prominence has been given to the draft of an address which the Queen might have made had there been a nuclear strike against Nato by the Warsaw Pact. More important were the sealed instructions for the commanders of our nuclear-armed submarines which would have been at sea. Even then such a disaster was becoming less and less likely, because of the implacable unity of Thatcher and Reagan, which eventually brought down the Berlin Wall and broke the Warsaw Pact. All a far cry from the frightening days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when airline crews would discuss what to do if the first nuclear exchanges took place while they were over the North Atlantic between America and Europe.

Now we can all read about the plans to meet and defeat Scargill's attempt to veto the recent general election and bustle Thatcher out of office, in the style of an Egyptian Army coup; plans which were carried out and led to the defeat of that insurrection.

Of course there will be plenty of legitimate political debate over much that was planned, decided or done in 1983. It is however beyond doubt that there was a sense of clear purpose, that the big decisions were thoroughly thought through and well planned, and that there was precious little fudge or procrastination in that government.

Last Saturday we learned that Our Masters In Brussels are planning to use spy satellites and drones for "internal and external" security purposes. We could veto such a proposal, but despite that it could still go ahead over our heads by a device in the Lisbon Treaty.

Had such a proposal for Brussels to spy on our country with drones and satellites been made in Thatcher's day, who could doubt that it would have emerged from the Prime Minister's office with the word "NO" writ very large and heavily underlined three times? Not only that, the plans would have been swiftly and thoroughly made to ensure that no such drones would infringe our borders while she was Prime Minister.

Perhaps there is something right about letting the public see how government used to be conducted.

…

Among your comments there were a number of forecasts of the 2015 election from people far more sure of their ability to see that far ahead than I am of mine.

However, I can look back to the past and once again I have to remind us all of the facts, which do not support some of the hypotheses posted. In October 1974 Wilson scored 11.5m votes against Heath's 10.4m. In 1979 Thatcher increased the Tory vote by 3.3m to 13.7m. against an unchanged Labour vote of 11.5.

Then in 1987, as a sitting prime minister, she increased her vote from her 1983 total of 13.0m to 13.8m against Labour's 10.0m.

Labour has never beaten that, although John Major did, polling 14.2m in 1992.

Michael Howard was not defeated by a handful of Ukip candidates. He simply could not persuade Conservatives to come out to vote for him in the numbers they had for Thatcher or Major.

In 2010 Cameron could only manage to increase the Tory vote by 1.9m and failed to win an overall majority, although beating Labour by 10.7m to 8.6m. The "centre ground" strategy failed.

The challenge for David Cameron is to match those achievements of Margaret Thatcher.

I am afraid that however well-intentioned, David in Rome's crude abuse of Farage is unlikely to deter enough former Conservative voters to return to the fold to give David Cameron an easy ride to victory in 2015. Indeed I found his description of Farage as a "fifth columnist pretending to want to leave the EU but sabotaging the campaign" and wondering if he is in the pay of MI5 to do that, to be so bizarre as to rob himself of any credibility.

The problem is that too many one-time Tory voters feel, like Ifitfits, marplot, LingoStu, ivowtotheemycountry, randal, boudicca, gentlemenabedinengland, cockneywideboy, the-prez and pewkatchow, that David Cameron is not a real conservative and is indeed happier to be in coalition with the Lib Dems than he is with his own party. Certainly there were those like assegai who thought that the "hill of unfair boundaries is too steep to climb", cagill65 who doubts that I will ever see another Conservative majority, and some who think the ConLib option is the best available On the other hand Laveen Ladharam thought that Cameron would do best to run as a Tory and could gain a lead of about 10 over Labour then do a deal with the DUP. An interesting thought.

There were some odd comments from ohforheavensake who thought that the Coalition is more Thatcherite than Thatcher, and assegai who thought Major was even more Thatcherite than that. I doubt if that view is widely shared.

I felt that darkseid wa a bit out of line to refer to the Conservative Party as "a bunch of nutters", and none too kindly to my time in the Whips' Office (I never was a whip) and my "visceral hatred of Lib Dems". It is not that I hate them. I simply think that they are badly mistaken in their views.

Then we had another long, rambling, ill-natured dispute over immigration, with Amos47 declaring that the House of Lords Select Committee report of 2008, which found no economic advantage to us in large scale immigration, was out of date. I suppose that is easier than engaging with the facts. We even had accusations that Lord Salisbury was a racist, dealt with in style by bersher, and a rant or two against Enoch Powell.

I was grateful to my colleague here at The Telegraph, James Delingpole, for his rave notice of my Radio 4 "Reflections" programme, and to indeed all the others who said they had enjoyed it.
Then lastly I should say to Dacorum that it is well possible to believe in our right to self government and that that is incompatible with the European Treaties, whilst at the same time seeing a case for a European alliance and close cooperation in many areas of mutual interest from trade to law enforcement.